The market value of an item is known at the time that it is sold to a consumer. After this initial transaction, however, the value of the item will decline. The amount by which the value decreases may depend upon many factors, such as the amount of time that has passed since the original sale, the amount of wear experienced by the item, and so on.
Because of the difficulty of determining these factors with any certainty, the value of an item after its initial sale is conventionally determined by resale values of the item. For instance, the value of a two-year-old automobile is determined by examining the prices for which similarly equipped automobiles of the same make, model and year have actually sold. While some adjustments may be made to these values (e.g., for vehicle mileage above or below some average range), determination of the automobile's value generally relies on past resale prices of the same vehicle.
Since these conventional methods of determining the value of an item are relatively simplistic and take into account only backward-looking data (e.g., past sales of the item), they are not as accurate as may be desired. For instance, an automobile leasing company may need to know the future value of the automobiles that it owns in order to obtain financing for expansion or other business transactions. It would therefore be desirable to provide improved methods for determining the future value of such items.